Stencil Frame Condition: Mesh Bond and Frame Flatness A stencil frame holds the foil under tension, and the frame is what keeps the apertures in the right place at the right height. Its condition decides whether the printer can control the print at all. The frame is the part of…

Plating Exhaust Control: Airflow, Scrubber and Tank Covers Plating exhaust removes the mist and vapour that a working plating line produces, and it does two jobs at once. It protects the people in the room, and it keeps the chemistry from moving between tanks. The exhaust system is part of…

Sequential Lamination Control for HDI PCB Builds: 6 Rules Sequential lamination builds an HDI stack one layer at a time. The inner cores are bonded, drilled and plated, and then further layers of prepreg and foil are added on top of the finished subassembly and pressed again. The method exists…

Panel Cleaning After Routing: Burrs, Dust and Handling Routing is a dusty, abrasive operation, and the panel that comes off the router carries burrs at every cut edge and dust in every hole. Panel cleaning after routing is what removes both before the board goes any further. The cleaning step…

Air Knife Flux Control in Wave Soldering: 5 Rules An air knife is a slot that blows a curtain of air across the board after fluxing, and its job is to remove the excess flux and leave a controlled film. The film thickness decides how much activator reaches the joint…

Copper Peel Strength Control on PCB Laminates: 5 Rules Peel strength is the force needed to pull a strip of copper away from the laminate at a defined angle and rate. It is a measure of the interface, not of the copper and not of the resin on its own,…

Wave Solder Nozzle Wear Control on Wave Machines: 6 Rules The nozzle is the part of a wave soldering machine that forms the solder into a standing wave. It is a consumable, and it erodes faster than the pump that feeds it, because the solder is hot, moving and loaded…

Press Plate Flatness and Pressure Distribution Control Press plates are the tooling that transfers pressure and heat into a laminated stack, and their flatness sets the limit on how uniform the finished panel can be. A plate that has developed a crown, a wave or a worn edge will press…

Drill Map Verification and Tool Assignment Control The drill map is the document that connects the design to the drilling machine, and it is the point at which a design error becomes a physical one. A hole assigned to the wrong tool, a diameter entered in the wrong unit or…

Array Spacing and Breakaway Tab Design in PCB Panels Array spacing and breakaway tabs look like details on a fabrication drawing, but they decide how the panel behaves on the assembly line and how clean the board edge is when the array is separated. Space that is too small leaves…